A Dacca Surprise

Soon after John has moved to Dacca to become joint co-ordinator, a newly arrived volunteer becomes seriously ill, and JG has to accompany him back to the UK. In a stay that is meant to last no more than a week, but lasts another ten, a series of critical events combine to destroy his self-confidence and sense of purpose. After many challenges to his certainties, not to speak of his sanity, he decides finally after much soul-searching to return to Bangladesh for a second time. The various undercurrents and relationships within the growing band of Omegans provide for more than one surprise, both in Dacca and elsewhere, while for the previously cloistered John, most of what he experiences is revelatory in one way or another. The changes in Omega come thick and fast, many arising from chance happenings, and provide a fair measure of humour along the way, most of it various shades of dark. A Dacca Surprise (so in more ways than one) continues the personal Odyssey on which John Gerard embarked on the death of his mother at the beginning of the quartet. In following up what he sees as his Christian duty to help the unfortunate, he surprisingly finds the identification giving way to one far more compatible with his previous hippie persona than he could ever have expected.